Piling backlog to offset Gujarat plant advantage, long waiting period for Maruti Suzuki cars to continue

Suzuki Motor Gujarat, the wholly owned subsidiary of Suzuki Motor Corporation started production of cars exclusively for Maruti Suzuki India from February. It was believed that the plant in Mehsana district of Gujarat will cut short the waiting period of the popular cars of Indo-Japanese automaker. However, it looks like the long waiting period for Maruti Suzuki cars are here to stay in 2017.

The Gujarat plant is expected to produce between 150,000 and 175,000 cars in 2017, which is roughly around the same number the company produces in its Haryana plants. "But our backlog orders are already about 130,000 to 140,000 cars and if you add the normal growth of market demand and demand for new models launching this year, I feel we will still unfortunately continue with backlogs in some of the models," ET Auto quoted RC Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti Suzuki as saying.

Vitara Brezza, Baleno, Ignis and Baleno RS are the new models from Maruti Suzuki's stable. The Vitara Brezza compact SUV was launched in March 2016 and it has already clocked over 2 lakh bookings. Maruti Suzuki managed to sell a little over 1 lakh units so far. The Baleno launched in October 2015 is still in demand. Maruti Suzuki currently sells nearly 7,000 units of Baleno monthly in the domestic market. Both Vitara Brezza and Baleno have over five months of waiting period at present depending on the city.

The Ignis and Baleno RS were launched in 2017. The Ignis has a waiting period of up to three months. The go faster version of the Baleno, the Baleno RS will take nearly a month for delivery. Though Maruti Suzuki has sets its sight on reducing the waiting period for its popular cars in 2017, the likelihood of that happening is on the slim side.